NDA, be gone!

[Kashemia]

As I said, I really think that is just for beta. It makes perfect sense that they don't want people to level too fast right now, so they slow down what you have access to. I'd be VERY surprised if it stays like this after launch. It sounds like a typical beta move.

[Sylian]

I had a question for those of you in beta, I'm sorry if this is already discussed elsewhere but it can be a little hard navigating the many posts around the forum as a new member. Well two questions, actually. Is player housing available (yet) in beta? I was wondering what they will do with that (mog houses?)

Also, is there an option for 'custom' emotes, like /e or /em? Or will we have to use other ways to emote like * * or : : ?

 

Thanks

 

On a sidenote, I do hope they add more customisation options for the other races. Because having 41 hairstyles for one race and 8 for another seems a bit odd.. so I reckon (hope) they'll add those.

[ArmachiA]

Big nope on both of those

 

/wave isn't even possible yet

[Satisiun]

In regards ofthe UI and the somewhat delayed movement of my character when playing the beta, one thing that has actually helped me a lot is, and this might sound weird ...

 

... pretend you're playing a game like Mass Effect.

 

Take note of how your character doesn't exactly stop on a dime like how they do in other games, particularly MMOs? It feels more, in a way, realistic. The manner in which the character slows to a trot, then finally stops. Or how they have to push back on their leg when strafing from left to right, or turning to turn around and continue moving.

 

Of course this doesn't necessarily forgive the general delay when it comes to responding to controls, both on the keyboard and the mouse.

 

If I wasn't stuck in the middle of a trip to see family right now, I'd go in to some more thoughts. But for the time being, 3 points of interest out of me:

 

-I really, really miss arrow camera controls. Bite me, home key users, and take your IJKL camera controls with you.

 

-I don't know if it is on purpose, but it seems to me like there is a lot, and I mean a lot, less accuracy when fighting enemies when you compare how fights worked in FFXI. Know how you almost never missed with a TP move in XI? Expect many moments of "FFFFFFUUUUUU--" when your TP attack you built up misses, and you're stuck flailing as a Puk Hatchling pummels you to oblivious.

 

-And speaking of monsters, they really need to find a better way to denote an enemy's strength. For the time being it is represented by a specific colored icon next to the enemy's name when they are targeted. For some people with issues of color blindness or color deficiency, this is a real bad thing to do, especially when there is no secondary method of checking their strength. And the other issue is at least right now, difficulty gauging seems very arbitrary and not at all accurate for many monsters.

 

More to come when I am not busy fending off relatives and golden retrievers.

[Sylian]

Big nope on both of those

 

/wave isn't even possible yet

 

*gasp* No /wave?! Dealbreaker!

 

I'm sure they'll add it eventually.. As for /e or /em, might have to do without it, like in Aion. Oh well, doesn't bother me quite so much. Just takes a little getting used to again And housing.. they did mention they will add it eventually?

[Kylin]

I'm sure things like custom emotes and player housing will be added in at some point. These kinds of things simply aren't top priority items for SE right now due to the release date being next month. FFXI was pretty bare bones when it first came out too and it's come a looong way. So I think we'll get all of the major stuff we RPers so desperately need. In the meantime, we'll just have to go gimp style. For instance, prior to SE allowing others to enter your mog house in FFXI, RPers usually just "confiscated" houses from NPCs and passed them off as their own in order to have little RP sessions in their character's "home."

 

I'm sure the beta testers here are already scoping out NPC homes to invade :lol:

[Sylian]

True enough, Castiel You're probably right, we'll just have to improvise for now. Using NPC housing seems like a good idea, although I remember the mix ups that using those houses used to cause in WoW. Guilds or players would 'claim' houses and then others would protest.. not to mention the ooc 'lollers' that would come in and try to spoil the RP. Then again, that was WoW and I think the FFXIV community will be alot more mature For the time being I'm looking forward to invading NPC houses >

 

Any idea if there will be many open houses/buildings/pubs etc. in the major cities/RP hubs?

[Ellion Goto]

I've tried a variety of class types so far, from the adventuring, to the harvesting, to the crafting. I've noticed that if I play an adventure class my physical level goes up faster, a harvester class levels both the class kill and physical level up pretty consistently together, and the crafting class promotes a faster skill level than physical for me. Just things to keep in mind.

 

Even with an Nvidia 465, the game is being terribly laggy at the moment. I know they are constantly working out packet issues with their servers however, so that's a plus. Every time I log in, the send/receive signals are in yellow - red. However I'm not terribly concerned about these problems because that's on their priority list of issues to resolve.

 

Controls:

 

The new controls are a lot better than the old ones (couldn't control the camera angle for hardly anything). However they are still a bit awkward. J,K,L,I operate the movement of the camera while the numpad moves your character and zooms the camera in and out if that gives you full-keyboard users any idea of how awkward the use will be.

 

 

Interface:

 

Probably my biggest complaint, to be totally honest, is having to go the menu every time you wish to interact with something major (i.e. aetheryte). In Final Fantasy XI you are able to tab a target and press enter to interact. Here you are not even able to target what you need to interact, but must simply be in proximity of the object, then hit menu, and the ability to interact magically appears there. Why this was coded like that is beyond me. It's a small fix so I know it's not on the priority list. There's also the laggy response from the controls but that's already covered in previous posts. Other than that, it's not too bad of a deal.

 

 

Game Mechanics:

 

I know for a fact SE is doing some selective changes in how the game is working to see how it's striking the crowd. One of these could be the massive cooldowns for Leves. As ArmachiA stated it was only a 4 hour cooldown in Alpha so that is something that is arbitrarily changing. I do not see the real reason for its change but there might be one, such as group promotion, as stated earlier.

 

 

Graphics:

 

On the lowest settings, it's still a very beautiful game. I think most everyone agrees on this who plays the Beta. In my opinion, it presents a more visually pleasing and intensive setting than Aion on its highest settings even with everything turned to minimum. So believe me when I say that if you can turn the game up to highest, with HDMI you will fall in love with the world almost immediately. Just keep in mind that even on high end cards right now the game is boggy because of SE running into last minute glitches (quite often as of late).

 

 

Potential:

It's very much there, overall I'd say for a Beta the game looks great for a pre-launch. I agree with Axl and a few others who stated that people are just never satisfied. Most of the people say things like they were in other Betas and they didn't look this bad, but this is untrue. If they were in other Betas they'd know that things were far worse in the game's development. WoW being a primary example. The game was absolutely terrible pre-launch. Aion had a good Beta launch because it was already pre-assembled, we just had to configure it for America so I exclude it, and others like it, from the Beta testing consensus. We have access currently to around 20% of Final Fantasy XIV in the Beta phases, and that seems about the norm. Because of this, there will be some issues at launch but those should be things such as environment interactions, class mechanics, and maybe UI functionality. The important thing that they fix at the moment is game performance. This is an absolute must for a pre-launch. New players will test the game for about the first 10 levels and make their decision then. It's critical the game runs smooth at this time. Things like higher-end interactions, other areas, balance, are able to be worked on after launch as players find them.

 

I think it's a positive direction, although it certainly won't be flawless at launch. It probably -would- be a lot better if it were going to launch in November/December as originally intended, but I'm sure there's a reason. Plus we get to play early so I see it as a fair trade-off.

[Kima wolf]

I agree with most of what the above poster said as well. My biggest complaint is the UI. It is horrible at the moment. Having to click and open a menu for ANY action is beyond ridiculous, and its the only thing really annoying me at the moment.

 

Also I found something hilarious, yesterday when me and a few others were messing around with retainers, the lady who sells them to you can actually get "overwhelmed" if too many people are trying to access her at once and tell you to come back later. LOL while it definitely makes the world more "alive" and "realistic", it can be annoying to have to wait.

 

And my final complaint is the current bazaar/market ward set up. It is beyond annoying to have to search EVERY SINGLE RETAINER for something. It'd be nice if perhaps when you passed near them what they sold was displayed so you could at least know where to go or perhaps a Auction house, but give some kinda incentive to use the Bazaar such as lower prices or discounts against the auction house. Hopefully I simply couldnt find the auction house but if that is how we'll have to buy things in game, as it is will make it extremely annoying especially since it looks like no npcs sell armor or weapons.

 

That being said overall I love the game and would purchase it. I am glad they don't hold your hands with glowing trails to NPCs or arrows over their heads. The NPCs actually say" Look at your map its by such and such. I LOVE that.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed it and it actually felt like a MMO, the same kinda feeling I got from Everquest 1 and 2. A actual live world. Top it off with the graphics, amazing to say the least. For instance when the wind blows, you can see leaves blowing by, bits of debris, it looks like a actual windy day on rolling hills. I can only imagine how gorgeous the desert will be or the dense forests.

 

I have all settings on high with the exception of shadows on standard and Ambient Occulsion off (because it caused me strangely enough horrible lag, but with it off I was smooth as warm butter, so if you lag, turn that off and it'll help some). The game looks better than Aion, and it is easily the best looking MMO to date hell it looks as good as some single player RPG games, and will probably remain so until something like Blade and Soul comes out.

[Averis]

The new controls are a lot better than the old ones (couldn't control the camera angle for hardly anything). However they are still a bit awkward. J' date='K,L,I operate the movement of the camera while the numpad moves your character and zooms the camera in and out if that gives you full-keyboard users any idea of how awkward the use will be.[/quote']

 

I use WASD to move the character and the mouse to rotate the camera. Works pretty much like any other MMO. My problem is that the camera won't auto-follow and face where you are heading. So I have to always be moving the camera to compensate.

 

The mouse delay and slow interface are my biggest issues with the game. You feel like you are fighting with the interface to play. It really takes you out of the game and gets annoying. :frustrated: If it's true this is the same menu system from alpha, I'm hoping there is a new one in internal testing that we'll see soon.

 

Outside of that and targeting thing and then hitting enter or opening the menu, I'm still trying to get my head around the crafting. I guess recipe books spoiled me as I have no idea what I can cook on my own without a guildleve (of which I failed so far - cooking).

 

It's so pretty, though. I should turn my setting down, but I like looking at it too much, even with low 20s FPS.

 

I had a Dodo follow me around yesterday. The mob AI is awesome. He was just checking me out. It wasn't aggro. He never attacked me. He was looking at me and following me around. It was great! I love to just explore the world!

[Kima wolf]

Ha yeah some animal charged after me but didn't attack lol, I love it the world is extremely organic and you can tell alot of work when into the AI and scripting.

[Ellion Goto]

The Menu interface is actually a Beta result. the Alpha menus were a lot of windows that you could just drag around.

[Zyanya]

Thank you very much guys, keep those comments rolling. :cheer:

[Al'Tanji Truemoon]

Haha, I agree with the AI comment. I was doing a Guild Leve near Skull camp that had to deal with Stray Dodos. There were three groups of two dodos each and when my friends and I were about to attack one group, another would creep up behind us as though to say; "Hit one, hit all! Do it, we dare you!" Sure enough, all four threw in the hate, no thanks to my accidental axe AoE. My little legs can move fast when they have to.